This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

"Tell Tale": a modern, and somewhat expansive, setting of Poe's story; can people trade consciousness?

The 2008 film “Tell Tale”, by Michael Cuesta, is obviously
inspired, possibly loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s notorious short story
“The Tell-Tale Heart”, which I remember reading in 11th grade
English. I did see the 1960 film decades ago. The film was partly produced by
Ridley and Tony Scott (“ScottFree”).

Josh Lucas plays Terry Bernard, a young single father
raising a girl with a genetic degenerative disease. Apparently he has some sort
of idiopathic or viral-caused cardiomyopathy, resulting in his needing a heart
transplant. As the film opens, he sees
visions of the donor’s last moments as the donor is murdered.

Now, the idea that transplanting an organ could transplant
elements of consciousness is intriguing. In my novel manuscript (which I need to
get back to), “Angel’s Brother”, I play with the idea that a bizarre virus
(encapsulating a nano-sized black hole) could transmit memories between persons
or “soul-entities”.

Terry feels compelled track down his donor and their
killers, which gets him into a rather dangerous and self-contradictory
predicament, as he gets recruited into some sort of supernatural mission, like
it or not. In the meantime, he falls in
love with his daughter’s female physician.

The original heart surgery has left Terry in amazingly good
condition. Yes, there is a long, narrow
surgical “zipper club” scar, but the chest hair has come back, almost hiding
it. (If I were an actor, I would have to
have to go through the makeup for this medical situation.) The transplant has resulted in some
mysterious effects: His blood type changes, as some how the translanted heart
cells migrated to his bone marrow, effectively causing another transplant. His daughter mysteriously improves
tremendously. But there is a price to pay, as the killers hunt him down.

In the climax, there is a lot of undressing and chest
opening, and the villain is fortunately (for himself) smooth.

Michael Cuesta also directed “L.I.E.” (“Long Island
Expressway), a film about a pedophile played by Brian Cox, which I saw at a special benefit at the
Lagoon Theater in Minneapolis on 9/11/2001.
(The DVD corrects a scene by removing the WTC towers.) Cuesta was present for the Q&A that
night, which of course was stressful given what had happened. In fact, a coworker had traded nightcall with
me so I could go. Afterward, Cuesta
could not fly home, and some of us went to a bar on Hennepin. No, it wasn’t
“The 90’s”, it was something like The Metropolitan. Cuesta couldn’t return to New York for three
days. I do recall conversing with him at
the bizarre “after party”, on a day when we didn’t know what would come next.

The screenplay was written by David Callahan. I think it is
challenging to construct an interesting feature length film from a classic
short story. The film is shot in
Providence, RI. The late filmmaker Gode
Davis (“American Lynching”) lived in West Warwick, RI, and I saw much of his
film on a visit on New Year’s Day 2003. I haven’t heard if anyone has picked up
the project, but I’m game to work on it if others want to.

The American distributor is now Genius Entertainment. The film was produced by a company called, ironically, Social Capital. Rick Santorum will not be impressed!

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